Environmental Toxicology

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists studying the effects of harmful algal blooms on lake water quality found that blooms of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) in Midwestern lakes produced mixtures of cyanotoxins and taste-and-odor causing compounds, which co-occurred in lake water samples. Cyanotoxins can cause allergic and/or respiratory issues, attack the liver and kidneys, or affect the...

In two separate studies, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists demonstrated that hormones such as estrogen can biodegrade in stream and groundwater environments. This is an important finding because the science, regulatory, and environmental communities have concerns about the environmental fate of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as hormones, in the human wastewaters discharged to the...

For some fish living downstream of sewage treatment plants the answer is yes. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists and their colleagues published a paper in Environmental Science and Technology documenting that specific antidepressants and their degradates found in wastewater discharged into streams by municipal wastewater treatment plants are taken up into the bodies of fish living downstream...

In a 2004-2009 study, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists found that pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities can be a significant source of pharmaceuticals to the environment. Effluents from two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that receive discharge from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities (PMFs) had 10 to 1000 times higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals than effluents from 24...

Two national-scale reconnaissance studies recently conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were the first to collect baseline information on the environmental occurrence of pharmaceuticals, personal-care products, detergents, flame retardants, naturally occurring sterols, and other organic contaminants in ground water and untreated sources of drinking water in the United States. These...

Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently investigated 51 streams in nine Midwestern States to determine the presence of a wide range of herbicides, their degradation byproducts and antibiotics. Herbicides were detected in most water samples, which were collected to coincide with runoff events following herbicide application, but antibiotics were detected in only 1 percent of the...